USA Luge’s Summer Britcher, wearing the FIL Luge World Cup leader bib, competes in the Winterberg, Germany World Cup on Saturday. (Provided photo — FIL/Michael Kristen)

LAKE PLACID — USA Luge officially announced its 11 nominations for the 2026 Olympic Winter Games in Milano-Cortina on Monday, Jan. 12, as the elite team is made up of a solid mix of returning Olympians and newcomers. The United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee will officially sign off on the nominations soon.

Among the nominations are three women’s singles sliders, who return to the Games after competing in the 2022 Olympics. They include Summer Britcher of Glen Rock, Pennsylvania, making her fourth Olympic team; Emily Fischnaller (formerly Sweeney) of Lake Placid, earning her third trip; and Ashley Farquharson of Park City, Utah, qualifying for a second time.

Men’s singles slider, Jonny Gustafson of Massena, also returns after competing in Beijing, China in 2022. Gustafson will be joined by first-time Olympian Matthew Greiner of Park City, Utah. Greiner, a past junior world championships medalist, claimed the last spot after beating Tucker West in Winterberg, Germany last weekend.

Competing for the first time at the Games will be the women’s doubles team of Sophia Kirkby of Ray Brook and Chevonne Forgan of Chelmsford, Massachusetts. Women’s doubles is making its Olympic debut.

The two men’s doubles teams will include 2022 Olympians Zack DiGregorio of Medway, Massachusetts, and Sean Hollander of Lake Placid. This time around, they’ll have their own sled, after borrowing Jayson Terdiman’s for the 2022 Games. The other team is made up of first-time Olympians Marcus Mueller of Brookfield, Wisconsin, and Ansel Haugsjaa of Framingham, Massachusetts.

The Olympic Opening Ceremony in Milan, Italy, takes place Feb. 6. There is a six-hour forward time change from Milan to the U.S. Eastern.

Men’s singles will kick off on Feb. 7 and 8. Women’s singles is Feb. 9 and 10. Men’s and women’s doubles is Feb. 11 and the team relay is Feb. 12. To view the full Olympic schedule, visit tinyurl.com/2wppx4dm.

For some of the returning Olympic sliders, these Games will have a different feel. In 2022, the coronavirus pandemic put a halt to spectators attending the Olympics, which meant family members couldn’t watch their loved ones slide.

Gustafson was one of those athletes who competed in the last Olympics. His family watched him compete at the Beijing Olympics from Mount Van Hoevenberg’s Mountain Pass Lodge while wearing fake beards inspired by Gustafson’s iconic red one. Gustafson said he’s excited to have his family in attendance in Italy.

“Anytime we have a home World Cup, and we have friends and family come out, it’s such an incredible experience. So that feeling multiplied by, I don’t know how many, for it being at the Olympics is going to be so cool,” he said. “With the last Games being COVID and everything, we weren’t able to experience that. Even though this is our second Games for some of us, it’s going to be a whole new experience to be able to compete in front of family and friends.”

The entire USA Luge national team had a bit of luck this season, when it came to home crowds. During the five FIL Luge World Cup races that were used for the selection process for the Olympic team, two were on U.S. soil.

The first was in Park City, Utah, with another in Lake Placid. The other races were the test event in Cortina, Italy — the site for the upcoming Olympics — Sigulda, Latvia and Winterberg, Germany.

Through those events, the U.S. sliders posted some solid results as the team vies for its first Olympic medal since 2018, when Chris Mazdzer took home a silver.

So far, USA Luge has won 10 World Cup medals this season, as Britcher has led the way with three individual medals — two golds and a bronze — and two as a leg in the team relay event.

For Britcher, 31, this season has been nothing short of dominant. Just last week, she was leading the FIL Luge World Cup women’s singles standing, despite missing the opening race, which the entire USA Luge team didn’t compete in since it wasn’t an Olympic qualifier. But now, it will also be historic.

She’ll become the third U.S. women’s singles slider ever to have competed at four Olympics — the other two were Cammy Myler and Erin Hamlin. Britcher said it hasn’t even sunk in yet that she’ll be competing for a fourth time.

“I’ve had a few moments where it’s started to hit me, and I’m very excited,” she said. “(But) I’m kind of waiting for when Team USA makes that announcment that’s kind of when that full moment will happen. (But) it is kind of unreal, I never really imagined that my career would go back this far when I made my first Olympic team in 2014. I didn’t realize, 12 years later, I’d still be competing.”

Through USA Luge’s qualification process, there were some notable athletes, including West, a three-time Olympian, who missed out on a chance to make the Games. West, of Lake Placid, dealt with injuries all season and narrowly lost out on another Olympic Team berth in the final race of the series.

On the doubles luge side, the 2026 Olympics essentially only allowed for one women’s doubles team from each nation to qualify for the Games. This meant that the U.S. women’s duo of Maya Chan of Chicago and Sophia Gordon of Sussex, Wisconsin, who had finished sixth overall in the Olympic qualifying standings, missed out after Forgan and Kirkby finished third.

Had the same rules applied to women’s doubles luge as they did to men’s doubles, Chan and Gordon would have qualified for their first-ever Olympics.

Also for the U.S., women’s singles athlete Emma Erickson of Park City, Utah, will not make the trip to Cortina. The men’s doubles duo of Dana Kellogg of Chesterfield, Massachusetts, and Frank Ike of Lititz, Pennsylvania, and men’s singles sliders Hunter Harris of East Fairfield, Vermont, and Aidan Mueller of West Islip, also did not qualify.